Lakers 🆚 Clippers: Which team is better right now? 🧐 | NBA Today

Lakers 🆚 Clippers: Which team is better right now? 🧐 | NBA Today

Year [Music] 23 for number 23. There’s been so much talk, Ramona Bryan, about the Lakers the last couple of days for a variety of different reasons, but it feels like the dominant headline has been is LeBron James going to stay in Los Angeles. That’s not something that I thought we were going to be talking about a couple of weeks ago. And it’s sort of maybe distracted from a bigger question that I’ I’ve had.
We’re talking about a guy who’s going to be 41 in December. How much longer is this ride, Ramona, going to last?
I mean, look, you hear this from people around the league that you he wants to play two, three more years or but until he says it,
until he’s the one who says, “I don’t want to put my body through what I have to put my body through to be as good as I am.” This man was an a top five 15 top 15 player in the league last year. He was still, and I had no qualms voting for him on my allNBA team last year. He’s still that good. So, I know he’s 41, but I I I don’t I don’t think it’s his last year. But the fact that the Lakers did not discuss a one in one or a two in one or or contracts beyond this year with him, they just let him sit back and pick up his option or decline his option. That tells you a lot. That means that it’s not in his control with the Los Angeles Lakers. That was a statement even though they didn’t make a statement.
For the first time in 23 years, he’s not the franchise player. From the day he walked into the NBA, he’s been the franchise player. Even in Miami, when Dwayne Wade was the incumbent star, you can ask UD, LeBron was the franchise player. So, this is a transition for him. It doesn’t mean that he won’t have a spectacular season. And it doesn’t mean that he has any lower standards. He has the opportunity to play a great season alongside Luca Donuch. And the Lakers have an opportunity to try to surround them with talent. And that is what he is doing. From what I am told, LeBron is not stressed at all right now. He is simply watching and seeing what the Lakers are doing. And that is what he will continue to do as he goes through the summer. The Lakers are the ones who have got to figure out how to make Luca Donuch feel comfortable about their future, which is what they’ve got to sell to him in one month, one month from tomorrow. And so, while there’s a lot of focus on LeBron, I don’t think the Lakers are thinking that much about him. I think they’re thinking about how do we get a center, how do we get some perimeter defense, and what are we going to say when to Luca when we go meet with him and offer him a contract extension? Well, particularly because the team just down the road was able to go out and get a center that the Los Angeles Lakers had their eye on here. So, let’s go from the Lakers to the Clippers. They shared the same arena for 25 years. All until the Clippers opened up into a dome this season. It’s just a sixmile trip on the 110, a little under five miles to the 105. And that’s where we have Bobby Marks. Bobby, what have the Clippers done to bolster their roster? so far this off season.
Well, they brought James Harden back to start. Two years, $81 million. The second year is partially guaranteed here. Here are two big decisions that they brought back. Nick Batum on a two-year contract. Brook Lopez on a 2-year $18 million contract. Batum, Lopez, and Harden, they all have something in common. What they have in common is that their contract is not guaranteed for next year. The Clippers are are maximizing potential max cap space in the summer of 2026. Here’s some questions for them. The continuity factor, 12 players return. It’s okay to bring back your same roster. They did add Brook Lopez as we talked about. What about Norman? Norman Powell is extension eligible four for 128. We’ll certainly keep an eye on that. And as I mentioned, that flexibility part could have a max spot. They’re not the only team though, Malikica. This summer, we had Brooklyn as the only team that has cap space. We’re projecting nearly half of the NBA. Next summer could have significant cap space.
Do you think that the Los Angeles Lakers or the Clippers, the Clippers looked like a better team in the postseason last year? Are they the better team heading into this next season?
I like the Clippers better. And look, Luka Donets could flip this entire script depending on how he looks at the start of the year and the chemistry with LeBron James, but right now they don’t have that chemistry. Clippers do. They’re basically running it back. You had Norman Pal had a career year. James Harden had an all league season. Zubot to me might be the most underrated player in the NBA. And now you go out and you have Brook Lopez as another backline anchor defensively and somebody that is going to be deadly in the five pick and pop game with James Harden. So Brook Lopez can still do that. I like the Clippers better. I just think the way they’re positioned, the way they know each other and coming off a year with 50 wins and running it back with everybody really understanding their role and adding depth. I like the Clippers better as we go into the season.
We were talking about Philadelphia earlier in the show and trying to maximize Joel Embiid. Um the Clippers have figured out, knocking on some wood here, how to be able to get the best out of Kawhi Leonard. We had questions about Kawawaii in in previous years. Those questions don’t exist anymore. How are they feeling about what they’ve built this off seasonason?
I thought there was a good little interesting nugget Lawrence Frank gave the other night after the draft. He said Kawhi Leonard had trained all the way through the end of the NBA finals to get his body reaclimated to playing that deep in the playoffs. And this is going to be the first off seasonason in a long time where he can just focus on improving his game and working out, not rehabbing. That is very important to me. I think last year we saw in the playoffs he looked very good in the beginning. he couldn’t, you know, it’s going to be hard for him to maintain that level coming off the injury he was, but now looking forward, they feel that he can continue training the way he was before. And I like the pieces they put around him. They arguably have perhaps maybe one of the best front lines in the league. Remember, this is a team that took Denver to seven games. Now you add Brook Lopez to the mix, who, by the way, texted me. I said, “Are you going to go to Disneyland a lot?” And he said, “That has to be the plan. I think I’ll live in Adventureland Treehouse.”
Oh, the Adventureland Treehouse. I hear the the the mortgage rates in the van entry house are pretty high actually. UD though making all of these moves. The Clippers, we talk about the West as being Oklahoma City obviously is leading the pack. You talk about Houston. We’ve been really intrigued by Denver. I don’t think we can forget about the Clippers here.
No, you cannot forget about the Clippers and not just the players that they have because they have everything that you need to contend. You have centers, you have wing defenders, you have scorers, you have Norm Pow, you have, you know, James Harden who’s a hell of a playmaker can also still score the ball for you. You have a healthy Kawhi Leonard hopefully. But I look at that coaching staff and and I I look at Lawrence Frank and I look at Van Gundy. Second year for Van Gundy.
Yeah. And I look and I look at um excuse me uh Tailoo. I I look at that coaching staff. So I look at that team as
if not the close but one of the most complete teams right now. And that’s where they have the edge over the Lakers because the Lakers still have a lot of work to do. This team is pretty much complete and ready to roll and we just getting started in free agency.
Malikica, can I add one more thing? Look, the the Clippers still have their $5 million mid-level exception. Obviously, they want to maintain
I take it.
They want to maintain their flexibility for this big summer coming up because they feel into a dome. Steve Balmer, they can sell themselves to future stars. But
sorry, if Bradley Beal were to be bought out of his contract, perhaps the Clippers would be a player in that. That’s something people have mentioned to me because the Clippers are have always been advantageous about getting stars uh on the cheap when there there’s a situation like that where they bought out. Look, in the past I’ve gotten point guards like John Wall, Rejan W Rondo, Russell Westbrook.
They could be very advantageous if something like that unforeseen would happen like if Bradley Beer would be bought.
I always like getting my stars on the chief. James Harden had the best year he’s had in five years. Made the AllNBA team for the first time since 2000. Norm Pal the best year of his career. Zubach had the best year of his career. Kawhi Leonard looked like an allNBA player when he came back in the spring. Look at this team. this team’s record, whatever it was, I don’t know what it was, they were a lot better. They were allegedly a five seed. They weren’t a five seed. They ended up having to play the Nuggets.
Agrees with you.
They had to play the Nuggets in the first round and they ended up, you know, having to not be able to get past them. If they had had a different matchup, who knows? This is a team that is much better than its record says. It’s much better than its expectation. Yeah. And you know,
the thing about them is they’re just they’re just laying back. They don’t have to worry about any expectations. Nobody’s paying attention to them. They are right there. This is one of the reasons why the West is so vicious.
You could make a case for four or five different teams winning the whole thing. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

On NBA Today, Ramona Shelburne, Bobby Marks, Udonis Haslem, Tim Legler, Brian Windhorst and Ohm Youngmisuk join Malika Andrews to compare the Los Angeles Lakers and LA Clippers.

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